Animation (Movie Genre)

“Birdman” and “The Grand Budapest Hotel” led the list of the 87th annual Academy Award nominations announced Thursday morning, with nine nominations apiece. “The Imitation Game” scored eight; two extraordinarily contrasting portraits of Texans, “American Sniper” and “Boyhood,” followed with six Oscar nominations each. The snubs? “Life Itself,” Steve James’ widely praised documentary on the life and career of film critic Roger Ebert, went un-nominated, though another Chicago-derived project, “Finding Vivian Maier,” received a documentary nomination. “The Lego Movie” got blanked in the...

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences unveiled the nominees for all 24 categories Thursday morning.Here is the list of nominees:Film"American Sniper""Birdman""Boyhood""The Grand Budapest Hotel""The...

More than 100,000 sex education films have been made over the last century or so, according to Brenda Goodman's documentary "Sex(ed)," a fun if somewhat brisk historical overview of the genre that screens Saturday at Chicago Filmmakers.
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Next restaurant announced the launch of its new menu earlier this week, and owners Grant Achatz and Nick Kokonas did it with the help of a trailer.
A cute cartoon is the latest in a line of videos produced by the Fulton Market restaurant to...

In stride with its counterparts in New York, LA, San Francisco, Boston and other cities, the Chicago Film Critics Association named Richard Linklater’s “Boyhood” best picture of 2014, the CFCA announced Monday.
The 48-member Chicago critics’ group...

The surreal show business satire "Birdman," a darling of critics for its innovative storytelling, led the Golden Globe Awards film nominations on Thursday, with its seven nods making it a frontrunner early in the Hollywood awards season.The...

"Heaven must have sent her to me as a blessing," says the awestruck woodcutter who finds a sparrow-size infant nestled in a bamboo sprout in "The Tale of the Princess Kaguya."
The movie, too, feels heaven sent, or near enough. It is a...

Charming in small doses, the "Penguins of Madagascar" prove altogether less irresistible in their feature-length starring debut. The latest example of DreamWorks Animation's franchise mania is a frantic, peppy, in-your-face slice of irreverent...

"The President," a Georgian- and English-language satire from Iranian director Mohsen Makhmalbaf, won the top prize Friday night at the 50th Chicago International Film Festival. Actress Kathleen Turner served as jury chair this year.
Prizes for...

Between the two of them, actor Jason Bateman and director Shawn Levy have made more than 30 film comedies. So when it came time to shoot one of several dramatic scenes in their new movie, "This Is Where I Leave You," they felt far from...

Hitting its 20th anniversary milestone this year, the Black Harvest Film Festival runs through the month of August at the Gene Siskel Film Center, spotlighting black cinema. The fest hasn't always been especially discerning about quality. I'm not sure...

The "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" franchise earns a Michael Bay-produced 3-D reboot that spares no expense in special effects and spares no decibels in the volume that is the soundtrack to all their new mayhem.
These digitally animated...

Rob Zombie's Great American Nightmare has announced a Chicago engagement for 2014. The ultimate Halloween horror event will invade the Chicago metropolitan area select nights from September 26-November 1 at Odeum Expo in Villa Park, IL.
Opening night...

Rob Zombie's Great American Nightmare has announced a Chicago engagement for 2014. The ultimate Halloween horror event will invade the Chicago metropolitan area select nights from September 26-November 1 at Odeum Expo in Villa Park, IL.
Opening night...

Toothless it's not.
In a world of sequels, reboots and franchise industry economics dictating that creativity is encouraged but not required, the DreamWorks Animation offering "How to Train Your Dragon 2" looks, feels and flows like a real...

"One bite of that, and he'll build you a Taj Mahal," a woman is heard hollering approvingly through an open window to her neighbor, a pretty young housewife named Ila who is in her kitchen, preparing her husband's lunch. "The Taj Mahal is a...

The sequel to “Magic Mike” now has a name (‘Magic Mike XXL”), director (Gregory Jacobs) and release date (July 3, 2015), but it remains to be seen if it will have former World Wrestling Entertainment Superstar Kevin Nash back in the role of Tarzan.
“I...

No other film released 25 years ago, and few made since, captured the crosscurrents of a single neighborhood on a sweltering summer day in late 20th-century America the way Spike Lee's "Do the Right Thing" did.
Lee's brash masterwork still...

In the commercial animation realm, there are movies that reach for something, or many things. Others are content merely to baby-sit.
The 2011 hit "Rio" was a baby sitter. And so is "Rio 2," a routine sequel following the perilous...

Imagine if you crossed “Romeo and Juliet” with “Bonnie and Clyde” in a French cartoon starring a penniless bear and a precocious mouse. No, that’s not a kids’ fever dream—that’s an elevator-pitch summary of “Ernest and Celestine,” a refreshingly...